All the Rage #35

LOS ANGELES, CA--What's really amazing is that the vast weight of fame and fortune all centered in one place doesn't tilt the country into the ocean.

I can see this happening in my mind. The right side of America starts to tip upwards, slowly at first, just leaning a little bit. As that motion gains momentum, the east coast starts to lift into the air, the nation itself literally snapping loose of the connective bedrock that usually keeps it bolted down. Meanwhile, the left coast has begun sinking into the ocean--stars of television shows and movies are tumbling out of windows and hitting the water with a smack before racing downward to the murky depths. As the right side lifts higher into the stratosphere, whole cities start to slide from the upper end and down the slanted slope of America, landing with huge explosions in the water. Finally, almost with a sigh of relief, the land mass quickly slides into the ocean until what used to be the home of the brave is completely submerged.

There's something about being in L.A. that makes you want to have quasi-profound thoughts like that. It's as though there's some unspeakable need to intellectualize it all, the beautiful sunny days and the embarassment of the rich, the simple yet incomprehensible fact that eighty percent of the people who have ever been famous in America all live within a fifty-mile radius of one another. You can't usually connect Tom Cruise and Bob Barker to each other, but it's easy to do here. Maybe they live on the same block, or they've shopped at the same store. They're usually just tenuously linked by their shared presence in the vast general sphere of pop culture, but in SoCal, who knows--they could be canasta buddies.

At the same time, there seems to be a general disdain from the locals for all such amazements, as if you're just an idiot from the midwest if you're only figuring all of this out now (which admittedly, I am). But these tiny discoveries that keep piling on top of one another manage to submerge me in a fantastical haze. For those who've made it their life's obsession to observe and consume pop culture, it's staggering to suddenly find yourself in the center of its production universe--it's a clich?, but it truly is a Dream Factory. For those who live here, it's just a town to live in, perhaps no more fantastical than any other city. The locals view their constant proximity to fame and fortune as mundane; for me, it feels more like a staggering revelation, something akin to a miracle.

The weather helps that impression. It's beautiful here, and as I type, the midwest is buried under a foot of snow. That fact alone would keep me here at least until Chicago's spring thaw, but then I'd just need to escape again come November or December, and run again from the bitter cold. When I landed at LAX, it had been raining, and I overheard locals observing to their out-of-town guests that "it never rains here." That sounds like as good a tagline as any city could ask for--in any other pathetic American town, the ground needs to be dampened by rainfall, but in L.A. it NEVER rains. The earth itself is wet with joy.

That evening after dinner, I hopped in my rental car and drove for four hours, occasionally getting out of the car to stand near tinseltown landmarks that had previously only existed in my imagination. I had picked up the Utopia Parkway album by Fountains of Wayne to listen to in the rental, and their edgy guitars and smooth-as-satin harmonies provided the perfect soundtrack as I drove along my own Utopia Parkway. The band's from the east coast, but their music belongs here, not there.

I visited every landmark I could find. The Chinese Theater, the Walk of Fame, the Roxy where Springsteen announced in July of 1978 that "I don't play no private parties--unless they're my own," they all sprang into reality with a jarring thud and captivated me. Again, for locals the sight of these landmarks has become a daily occurrence, but you can't help but be amazed on your first trip, I think. It's all too much.

It's a heady cocktail that Los Angeles pours into your brain--the gorgeous weather, the stench of fame, the presence of pop culture history at every turn. The most powerful flavor in the mix is an endless supply of potential. The entire time I've been here, I've been buzzing with an unidentifiable excitement, as if anything could happen at any moment. I could sell a screenplay, buy a Porsche, meet the California girl of my dreams. It could all happen today, and if it doesn't happen today, then it could happen tomorrow, or the next day, or soon. All the desperate actors and directors, writers and producers, singers and wannabes are constantly projecting their desires into the environment. The air hangs heavy with their hopes, and if you breathe you can't avoid tasting them.

In the end, maybe that's why the City of Angels is so captivating. An unending supply of hope is one of the most addictive drugs imaginable. In Los Angeles, as long as you stay on the right roads and avoid the dirty homeless people littering the sidewalks, hope goes far beyond floating--it leaps out of the water and grabs you by the throat.